The most innovative trends in web development in the past few years have centered on the JavaScript language, both on the client (frontend) as well as the server side (backend). It comes as no surprise, therefore, that numerous tools are being created to facilitate the web programmer’s work, such as new Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) centered on web frameworks and libraries.

Web frameworks make it much easier to develop appealing and easy-to-use web applications for end users. They focus mainly on Single Page Applications (SPAs) that allow you to perform client-server operations in a single web page without having to refresh the page. For this, they use their own mechanisms for refreshing data and variables in a transparent way to the developer, which gives them great power and speed when it comes to creating websites.

Among the most popular web development frameworks out there are Angular.js, Vue.js or React.js. The latter of these, which is currently one of the most in-demand, was created by Facebook as an open library code to develop component-based web applications.

A component is a data module that performs operations defined by the developer and that has its own graphic interface. It has the advantage that it can be used and reused in multiple web pages without needing to be reprogrammed. A calculator is an example of a component, and adding it to your web page is as simple as writing in your page code.

This is, broadly speaking, the main attraction of React.js. If we get more technical about it, we can say that the framework is built around functions that turn page status updates into a virtual representation of the resulting page.

When a state change occurs in React.js, those functions are once again executed to determine a new virtual representation of the page. This result is then automatically translated into the Document Object Model (DOM, that is, the web object representation) changes necessary to reflect the new page presentation.

While it may appear that it would take longer for the page to show, React.js has a very efficient algorithm to determine the differences between one representation and another. Said algorithm only produces changes in the elements that are different, thus making the process very fast.

React.js is mainly used in the popular Facebook and Instagram social networks and applications, which, by the way, are constantly dealing with large volumes of data.

At Teldat, our use of React.js to develop web applications for our network device clients on our SD-WAN solutions, allows us to offer attractive, robust and efficient applications that the end user finds easy to use.